


To Memory Now I Can't Recall

by mllelaurel



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Background Claude/Byleth, Background Yuri/Byleth, Banter, Canon Temporary Character Death, During Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Female My Unit | Byleth, Grief/Mourning, M/M, solace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:47:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24724768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mllelaurel/pseuds/mllelaurel
Summary: “Claude,” Yuri says. “I’m going to ask the question you don’t want me to ask. Now’s your chance to back out.”“Fuck,” Claude says. He doesn’t say no. The specter of that question has hovered over them since Claude saw an old friend looking out to sea. He can almost feel her hand on his back, directing him. All he has to do is close his eyes and pretend very hard.“What happened to her?” Yuri asks. “To—what happened to Byleth?”A chance meeting in Deirdru, a bottle of wine, a whole lot of unresolved grief, and maybe a little resolution.Written for the FE3H Kink Meme.
Relationships: Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 16
Kudos: 70
Collections: FE3H Kink Meme





	To Memory Now I Can't Recall

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following FE3H kink meme prompt:
> 
> "During the timeskip Claude misses Byleth and visits a bar to help take his mind off his problems with a little alcohol, he runs into Yuri and finds that he also can't help but miss Byleth, they drink and talk for a while, Yuri teases Claude, Claude teases him back, one thing leads to another and they end up fucking.
> 
> \+ They have feelings for Byleth as well as each other but both are under the impression that the other only likes Byleth.  
> ++ Yuri tops Claude."
> 
> I think I got everything but the bar.

The ocean currents keep Deirdru warm, even in the waxing autumn. The balmy evening refuses to press heavy or break into thunder, eschewing all sense of pathetic fallacy. The staff of the Riegan manse have thrown open every window, lest the council members ensconced therein suffocate on their own importance. Count Ordelia has finally called for a recess after a day of going in belligerent circles, and Claude could kiss the man, the crosshairs of Lysithea’s wrath notwithstanding. 

It’s been a long five years. Almost five, not quite. Feels like twenty, Claude thinks, though that may be the endless meeting after endless meeting, the subterfuge and responsibility nipping at his heels. The Empire hasn’t invaded. Not yet, and Claude would like to keep it that way. 

He could just as easily have missed the familiar glimpse of lilac hair. Fate is a river, his father had once told him. Every possible current runs beneath its surface. Everything of which you are capable exists somewhere, somewhen. And so, it’s all too easy for Claude to imagine myriad worlds in which he never saw Yuri Leclerc standing on that quay. 

It would have been a shame. The glow of sunset threading through violet, softening Yuri’s pale skin into gold, makes for one hell of a display. His face is tilted up into the light, squinty and peaceful, almost bemused. 

He turns around as Claude approaches, no matter how sneaky he’s trying to be. Can’t sneak around a master thief. All to the good, probably. Claude gets the impression someone who managed to actually startle Yuri would be in for a bad time. 

“Hey, friend,” Yuri drawls.

Claude grins. “Hey yourself. Taking in the sights?” 

The harbor seals bark lazily in the backdrop. Up close, Claude can see the way Yuri’s eyes keep flicking to them. “What the fuck are those things? I want twenty.” 

“But where would you put them?”

“I’ve got space. Haven’t you heard? I’m the Lord of the Underground.” He keeps his voice light, but Claude still catches a trace of something heavier beneath. 

“Is that what you’re here about?” Claude asks. Deirdru’s not Yuri’s usual stomping grounds. If it were anyone else anywhere else, Claude might worry about new crime lords moving in on his territory. But Leicester has always been a squabbling den of organized intrigue. At least Yuri is honest about it. 

“Lot of hungry folks down below.” Yuri’s eyes narrow. “Edelgard may have let Garreg Mach be after the battle, but she’s left us effectively cut off.” 

“No one officially in residence—” 

Yuri taps his nose. Got it in one. “Means no trade coming in. Save the roughest kind. So I see if I can broker us some new deals. The families here have been surprisingly accommodating.” The way he says ‘families’ seems to encompass nobility and crime in equal measure. Again, unsurprising given the setting. “Honestly, it’s pretty refreshing.” 

“Figures you’d like it up here.” Claude stretches, letting the tension of the day slowly start to bleed from his shoulders. 

“Oh? You don’t?”

“To quote the lovely Hilda Valentine Goneril, it’s soooooo much work.”

Yuri laughs, surprisingly genuine. “That’s… I was going to say that’s a good Hilda impression. But I’d be lying.”

“What’s wrong with my Hilda impression?”

“Everything,” Yuri says, stone cold. 

Claude shoots him a mock glare. “Careful. I could stick you with the Duke bag and run, just for that.” 

“Isn’t it ‘Sovereign Duke’ now? I won’t have you selling me low quality goods either, just because you’re a friend.” 

“So long as it’s you and not me putting up with Gloucester, I’ll throw ‘Sovereign’ in for free.” 

“Seems like an awful easy deal,” Yuri says. “Where’s the catch?”

“Gloucester is the catch.” Truer words Claude has never spoken. 

Yuri shakes his head. “Right, right. Lorenz’s father. If they’re anything alike…” 

“Oho! If you’ve got stories of Lorenz being an ass, this I’ve got to hear.” Claude drops down to sit on the quay, fancy noble clothes be damned. 

“For one thing, he mistook me for a woman,” Yuri says. For another, he sent me to Manuela’s office with a migraine. ...You know ships dock here, right? We blocking traffic?”

“It’ll be dark soon,” Claude says. “Too late for anyone but us to dock here. Well. That’s not exactly true. Smugglers come in when smugglers come in, but there’s a chance you know _that_ schedule better than I do.” That’s a lie as well. You didn’t get to be Duke Riegan by turning a blind eye to the goods filtering through your capital. Legal and otherwise. “A migraine, seriously?”

“So. Fucking. Much. Rose Oil. I thought I was going to be sick, and I’ve smelled some _things_ in my day.” A click of the heels, and Yuri joins him in sitting on the quay’s edge. “In poor Lorenz’s defense, he apologized quite prettily for both transgressions. Especially the latter. Did you know how much of a fussbudget he is when someone’s ill?” 

“So Leonie tells me.” Claude sighs. “Meanwhile, if I died, I bet he’d plant a single Gloucester rose on my grave and call it a fitting tribute.” 

Yuri does that thing he does, fingertips arched against his forehead to avoid smearing makeup, in lieu of a full face-palm. “And so a thwarted love affair ends in tragedy.” 

“Ugh.” Claude points a finger at Yuri. “You. Are no longer Sovereign Duke. I’m revoking your title.” 

Yuri chuckles. “Just like all nobles. Fickle to the last.” 

“So, why Leicester?” Claude asks, turning on a dime. “Why not Adrestia? For your dealings, I mean.” There’s no sense in asking ‘why not Faerghus?’ Faerghus is fucking on fire and has been since Dimitri died.

“Who’s to say I haven’t tapped Adrestia.” Something hard glints in Yuri’s eyes. “Some of them might like the irony of aiding the Church’s former prisoners.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “And others might balk at aiding the Church’s former wards. It’s all the same in the end. Doesn’t matter, so long as I get mine.” Claude can’t tell if that last bit is referring to Adrestia’s nobility or to Yuri himself. It’s bitter either way. 

“That aside,” Yuri adds, “I fought against the Empire at Garreg Mach. Random nobles wouldn’t know or care, but I doubt Edelgard would forget, if it ever gets back to her.” 

Right. The Battle for Garreg Mach. Claude’s stomach churns. He’s been doing his best not to think about it. No point in picking at old wounds, Claude thinks, then goes ahead and picks away.

“Were you down below?” he asks. 

Yuri nods. “I had my own people to look after. We figured Edelgard might try to use Abyss as a break-in point, especially since she knew about the canyon entrance and all the tunnels.”

“She didn’t, though,” Claude muses, half to escape that pernicious ‘we.’ Plenty of tacticians up at Garreg Mach, but there’s no way Yuri could be referring to anyone but Teach. It’s something in his voice, hollow and wistful, cracking on innocuous words. 

“She didn’t,” Yuri agrees. “Never could figure out why. Favor to an old friend, maybe.” He frowns. “Assuming we ever were friends. Never did get a good read on her, the way I did with the rest of you. Clearly, or I might have seen the war coming.” 

Claude only hesitates a moment before reaching out to touch Yuri’s shoulder. Yuri only tenses a little at the contact. “None of us saw Edelgard coming,” Claude says. “How could we?”

“There are tells,” Yuri says. “Everyone’s got tells.”

“And some of us are really good at hiding them.” 

Yuri looks him dead in the eye. “Some of _us_ , huh?”

“Said the crime lord to Duke Riegan. Not like either of us has ever bothered hiding our sketchy halves.” Why would they, when roguery makes for such an excellent cover? The magician’s right hand conjuring sparks while the left rifles through your pockets. Everyone knows Claude has secrets. It only becomes an issue when they start guessing which ones. Yuri’s much the same, if Claude doesn’t miss his mark. 

“Fair enough.” They’ve shifted as they sat, nearly shoulder-to-shoulder now. The warmth of another person so close to him shouldn’t make the bones of Claude’s heart ache this much. But oh, they ache all the same. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What _happened_ up there?” Yuri asks. “Everyone’s got their own story, and none of it matches up.” 

Claude grimaces. “What happened up there was chaos. We thought we were winning. At least we thought we could hold them back. And then, we weren’t. We couldn’t. And then it all went to shit.” 

“Did Rhea really turn into a dragon?”

“Well,” Claude says, “there was definitely a dragon. Its provenance is unclear.”

“Huh. Was it at least on our side?”

“Didn’t help either way.” This is the bleakest Claude’s allowed himself to sound in years. Any other company and he might have held it in, but Yuri would be a hypocrite to mind. Even his humor often carries a black edge. 

A sea breeze picks up, chilly as the season should be. It tangles in Yuri’s hair and numbs Claude’s bare hands. Despite his lighter clothes, Yuri barely seems to react. Almost a shame, Claude thinks. He hasn’t offered his coat to someone this pretty in a long time. It’s an idle thought, almost intrusive. Claude takes it for what it is and moves on. 

“It’s getting rougher out here,” Yuri says, looking to the waves. “This might be a conversation best continued indoors. Maybe over a bottle of wine I don’t feel like lugging back to Garreg Mach.”

“Wow, rave reviews for that vintage, huh.” Claude stands, dusting off his trousers. “How could I refuse?” 

There’s something mesmerizing in the way Yuri hops to his feet. Claude had forgotten how inhumanly nimble the man is. “It was a bribe,” he says. “What else am I supposed to do with it?”

“Can’t do anything without a bribe around here.”

“It’s not as bad as Adrestia. Keep up, von Riegan. Wouldn’t want you to get lost in your own city.” He’s off already. _Fast_ as well as nimble, damn his Crest. It isn’t every day that Claude is forced to scramble after someone. 

***

Yuri’s room at the inn looks surprisingly nondescript. Claude had expected luxury or squallor, nothing in between. Instead, there’s a bed, a desk, two chairs. A cluster of magic-less lanterns fill up the space with a dim orange glow, enough to see each other by. 

The promised wine proves light and fruity, less sweet than Yuri might prefer and therefore better than Claude had feared. Yuri takes a sip and nods, the acceptance of a compromise. They drink, passing the bottle back and forth, until the wine’s nearly gone. Only then does Yuri’s gaze turn serious. “Claude,” he says. “I’m going to ask the question you don’t want me to ask. Now’s your chance to back out.” 

“Fuck,” Claude says. He doesn’t say no. The specter of that question has hovered over them since Claude saw an old friend looking out to sea. He can almost feel her hand on his back, directing him. All he has to do is close his eyes and pretend very hard. 

“What happened to her?” Yuri asks. “To—what happened to Byleth?” 

Yuri’s never hesitated to call Teach by her name before, Claude thinks. This is the first time Claude’s heard him stumble over her name. 

Claude rests his head in his hands. Easier to say this without meeting Yuri’s eyes. 

“She fell,” he says. Two words, inadequate to describe the moment split into halves and millionths. The fear and hope burning up in the rank despair of failure. Two words to tell a story. More to keep going.

“I don’t…” He doesn’t know everything. Which action followed which reaction is anyone’s guess. “She took a spell to the chest. Dark magic. I went wyvernback when I saw the.” Gods, it’s hard to breathe. “The dragon. My girl’s fast. I could get a closer look.” His words are scattering, refusing to cohere into sentences. “Teach must have followed the dragon too. So did Edelgard’s mages.” Those sinister ‘friends’ someone as smart as Edelgard should never have trusted. 

“I tried to catch her,” he says, choking on the words. The wind had swallowed his shouts, slammed into him as his wyvern dove. Faster and faster, and not fast enough, the inexorable calculations of fall versus flight. Everything had slowed except for her. 

“I don’t think she even saw me.” It’s better that way, Claude tells himself. He’s the only one who should have to live forever in that moment of fractured hope.

Yuri’s lips brush over his temple, burning warm as a hearthfire. His hands cover Claude’s. Claude wouldn’t have expected this gentleness, isn’t sure he wants it, but he doesn’t pull away. 

“She saved my life,” Yuri says, simple and raw. “She didn’t have to. I was nothing to her, me and the other Wolves. But she picked up what I was throwing down, played along. She brought me an ace.” The huff of his exhale ruffles Claude’s hair. “And by that, I mostly mean Linhardt.”

Claude makes an offended noise, watery and half-hearted.

“Fine, the rest of you guys were all right, too.”

“I miss her,” Claude says. It sounds hollow, coming from him, precisely because it’s true. Honesty’s never suited him. Gods, he misses her so much. The negative space of her should have healed a long time ago. And yet, when the battle finally comes to them, Claude knows he will still look for her at his side, and ache anew to find she’s not there. 

“The world’s shittier without her,” Yuri agrees. 

“It doesn’t have to be.” Optimism, now optimism is his thing. Optimism he can do. “She’s come back before. Banished into nothing, and she still came back to us. So I keep thinking, maybe she’s still alive. Or she will be again.” Weird Fódlan god shit he’s never really understood but wants to, perverse curiosity at war with a healthy skepticism. 

“So why hasn’t she?” Claude asks the darkness, quiet and final. 

When he looks up, Yuri is so, so close, wisps of hair dangling in his view, forehead nearly bumping Claude’s own. “Fuck if I know,” Yuri says. The wine bottle dangles in his hand. He takes a swig.

“A toast to the dead. May they only come back if we like them.” 

Claude watches the bob of his throat like a man already drunk. Like a man dying of thirst in sight of a spring. When he takes the bottle, the rim of it is still warm from Yuri’s mouth, smudged with traces of lip gloss. 

He drinks. “To the dead. And to the living.” 

“Because we’re still fucking here,” Yuri says with conviction. 

_You get it,_ Claude thinks, and kisses him, chasing the taste of grapes inside his mouth. Because he’s lonely, because of the way the lamplight turns Yuri’s eyes the color of wine. Because Yuri is beautiful, and oddly kind, and someone else who knows that staying alive was never a guarantee, no matter how hard you fought for it. Because he probably loved her too. Neither of them need to say it to know. 

When he pulls back, Yuri’s smile is sharp, and wicked, and _hungry_ , his eyelashes lit low like a basking cat’s. 

“You sure it’s me you want right now?” he asks, deceptively casual. 

It almost hurts to let go of him. At least it’s a familiar ache. “I know you’re not her,” Claude says. “No one else could be.” 

Yuri taps his upper lip with one finger. Claude nips at it on reflex, swirls his tongue around the tip before Yuri pulls away. “That doesn’t answer my question,” Yuri says. 

Here’s hoping Yuri doesn’t expect a straight answer. What’s the fun in that? Besides, Claude has already given too many of those tonight. He flips it back instead. “I could ask the same of you.” 

“You could.” Yuri drops his forehead to rest against Claude’s. “And if I said yes?” 

“Then,” Claude says, “that would be a yes.” He grits his teeth and gets serious for a moment. “It is a yes, you know.” 

Yuri puts down the bottle. 

The starched lapels of Claude’s coat twist in his hands as he tugs him forward. Yuri’s mouth leaves a searing trail up the side of his neck. A hint of teeth. Not enough to mark, not yet. 

“Never pictured you with a beard,” Yuri muses, dragging fingernails through the thick of it. “It makes you look like you’re forty. I think I like it.” 

Claude sputters. “I was going for actual grown-up—ah! But forty? Come on!” 

“What? That’s the beard age in Faerghus.” 

Fódlan, Claude thinks, not for the first time, is fucking weird. No Almyran over the age of twenty would dare go barefaced and expect to be taken seriously. Not that it’s something he would bring up now, even for banter’s sake. Bad enough for Balthus to have called him out back in school. Give Yuri the tiniest of inches and he’d take a mile, figure it all out, have that hanging over Claude’s head. Assuming Balthus hasn’t told him already. The two of them are thick as, well, thieves. 

“You with me, friend?” 

Claude snaps out of it. These are the risks you take when you take someone to your bed. When you decide you’d rather not be alone. Everyone’s a risk. You’ve just got to calculate them. “Nope,” he says. “I’m still offended on behalf of my beard.” 

“There, there,” Yuri presses a kiss to the angle of his jaw. “It’s a very handsome forty, at any rate. All right. Up you go.” He shimmies out of Claude’s grasp, and Claude follows, only a little unsteady on his feet. 

“I want to suck your dick,” he tells him, giddy. “Can I?”

“Be my guest,” Yuri says. “But first—” He pushes Claude back against the wall and kisses him, hot and devouring. Claude groans into his mouth and finally gives in to the urge to run his hands through Yuri’s hair. It’s as soft as it looks, liquid silk only slightly tangled by wind and ardor. Going to get more tangled soon, if Claude has his way. 

Yuri’s flush against him, hot as a whipcord brand, and Claude busies himself exploring the muscles of his shoulders and arms, the slope of his back, the curve of his ass. His legs. Gods, you need a license for legs that long. Claude’s gonna have to fine him. He’s the Duke. He can do that. 

“Handsy, aren’t you?” Yuri mutters against his lips. 

“Do you mind?” Claude pulls him close and spins them around so that Yuri’s the one up against the wall. 

Yuri’s eyes flash. “If I minded, you’d have a set of broken fingers.” 

“So you don’t mind.” 

Yuri’s hand fists in his hair. Claude grins at the sting of it, all teeth and wild sparks tingling up his spine. “I think you’re getting distracted,” Yuri says, and pulls, forcing him down. Claude goes to his knees easy. Not that it wouldn’t be fun to struggle against this, just to prove he can, but Yuri’s right. This way lies something he wants even more.

He runs his palms over Yuri’s thighs, admiring the cut of his trousers, the perfect fit of cloth over skin. Yearns for that skin sudden and sharp enough to make short work of the clasps and laces and bury his face in the thin strip of belly between shirt and belt. The man above him proves ruthless and ticklish in equal measure, squirming when Claude’s tongue flicks over his belly button and tightening his grip on Claude’s hair. 

Claude could tease him for ages, taking his time in drawing out his dick, swirling his tongue along the shaft as he pulls back the foreskin. The kind of ‘good but not enough’ he knows well from experience. But Yuri’s too good at this game to be impatient, too genuinely in control to be riled up. So Claude takes as much of him as he can. Breathes through his nose, digs his fingers into Yuri’s ass, and lets Yuri fuck his open mouth. He rolls his tongue around the head, savoring the familiar musky taste. Tries to swallow around him. Gags, tries again, chasing that high of too much, too deep, never too much of a challenge. It’s better this way, rough and inescapable, no time or space for him to get lost in the recesses of his mind. 

Yuri pulls him up before he can make him come. Claude looks up at him through glazed eyes, sees him flush-faced and disheveled, and thinks, yeah, I did that. Yuri’s voice is rough, like he’s been the one inhaling dick. “How do you feel about getting fucked?”

“Yeah,” Claude says. “I’d be into that.” Especially when Yuri asks it in that husky voice of his. Some other night, sure, he’d love to have Yuri under him, to work out what makes his lips part and his toes curl in pleasure. If there’s some other night. Tonight he can go the other way. “Been a while, though,” he admits.

Yuri offers him a hand up. “Not so long you’ve forgotten how it goes, I hope?”

“Nah.” Claude takes a moment to pull off his boots and lose the coat he’s been slowly roasting in. “Bodies have a way of remembering. So do brains.”

If only he was just talking about sex. Unbidden, the sounds of battle come again. The wind, the shouting, the clash of steel. In his mind, his hand grazes Teach’s—Byleth’s—almost catching her before she falls away. That’s not how it really happened, but it’s close enough he can still smell the smoke, the ozone, the blood. 

The lavender. That last is unfamiliar enough to unseam the memory. Lavender and white musk. A trace of cologne at the collar of Yuri’s shirt, or perhaps in his soap. Claude inhales it in long, gusty huffs. 

“I’m fine,” he says, and Yuri rolls his eyes. A slim hand traces circles on his back. 

Claude feels like an idiot. 

“All this talk of war…” He spreads his arms in mock surrender. “Don’t get me wrong. I can think of people who’d be into that. I’m just not one of them. Go figure.” 

Yuri’s hand rests on the back of his head, steadying. “I didn’t help by bringing it up, did I? I’m sorry, Claude. Genuinely, I am.”

Claude flops back on the bed. “Man, I really ruined the mood, huh?”

“‘Depressing’ is a mood,” Yuri points out.

Claude elbows him. 

“In all seriousness, shit happens.” 

‘Don’t go,’ Claude wants to tell him. Which is a stupid thing to say, considering this is Yuri’s room. “Don’t go,” he says anyway, and hopes the meaning comes through. 

Yuri lies down next to him, fingers tracing his cheek. “I thought war wasn’t your kink?”

“Forget the war,” Claude says. Yeah. Forgetting sounds like a plan right now. He knows it won’t work, not really, but forgetting for minutes at a time is still forgetting. 

Yuri doesn’t reply right away, looking him over thoughtfully. Then he nods. “You know what? Yeah. Sure.” 

It’s slow this time, stripping off clothing, the simple, complicated pleasure of skin on naked skin. Yuri kisses his shoulders, the hollows of his throat, sucks marks all along his chest. Claude retaliates, especially proud of a small purpling bruise right over Yuri’s heart, which makes Yuri grunt and suck air through his teeth. That one’s got _staying power_. Long hair tickles Claude’s chest, fills his nose with lavender again. 

By the time Yuri reaches for the oil, Claude’s on his back, as hard as he’s ever been. By the time Yuri’s got two long fingers inside him, nudging his prostate with every other thrust, withdrawing to tease the sensitive rim, Claude’s bitten down on his own arm to hold back embarrassing noises. Would be Yuri’s shoulder if he ever got in reach, but all that attempt gets him is a smirk and a “nice try.” 

The third finger’s more of a stretch. A slight burn, a building pressure, Claude’s feet rucking up the sheets. Then Yuri leans over him, hands on the backs of his thighs. Gods, the look on his face when he presses inside, lower lip caught between his teeth, sheen of sweat on his brow, eyes hazy with pleasure. Claude arches his back, hooks a leg around his hips to pull him closer. The change of angle drives Yuri deeper inside him, drives a gasp from Claude’s lungs. “Ah, fuck.”

Every time he does this is a rediscovery. How full he feels, spread out and parted, intimately intruded upon. Friction and heat and the smell of another man’s fresh sweat. No memory does it justice.

He scrabbles for touch, fleeting grasps of Yuri’s knee, his elbow, his thigh. His mouth lets slip some incoherent treacherous plea—

And Yuri murmurs, “I’ve got you,” low and tender, and Claude shakes his head frantically when Yuri reaches for his dick, because he doesn’t want this to be over, not yet. Still the edge keeps rising as Yuri fucks him harder, sinking rough and deep with every stroke. 

“Closer,” Claude manages to say, between the curses and groans. “Get closer, get over here.” Yuri’s too far away above him, out of reach though their bodies tangle. 

Yuri draws in a jagged breath, shifts. The angle’s not as good, but it’s better anyway as Yuri lets himself fall forward, the muscles in his arms drawn tight as they take his weight. Close enough for Claude to catch him, hook one ankle over Yuri’s shoulder, plaster a hand to his side. Chest to chest, brow to brow, no chance of falling. 

Yuri’s lips brush his ear, whispering filthy nonsense, made filthier and hotter and realer by the proximity. Claude digs nails into his back. Tries to kiss him again and misses, getting cheek and jaw and throat. Almost as good, so worth it. HIs dick drags across Yuri’s stomach, his chest. Pulses quick and quicker, slick with precome already. All it takes is a moment of synergy. A low, lucky thrust, and Claude is coming, gasping for breath as every drop of old stale air leaves his lungs, replaced with something clean, bright, and new.

Yuri’s dick twitches inside him before the high fades. Yuri, Claude notes in the small, still-functioning recess of his brain, makes no noise when he comes, quiet aside from his ragged breath, eyes squeezed shut. 

His arm trembles, and Claude catches him again.

***

In the afterglow, Yuri proves to be a sprawler, taking up every available inch of bed in the manner of all cats, elbows and head propped up on Claude’s chest. The slight weight of him feels wonderful, grounding in a way Claude wouldn’t have expected. 

A heaviness has seeped into Claude’s own limbs. He’s fumbly and worn out in the best way. His head is clear, the jittery energy thrumming through his body used up at last. 

“I should order a bath brought up,” Yuri says after a long, comfortable silence. The room contains a ewer and bowl for basic mop-up, but that’s unlikely to be enough for both of them. Claude takes a private moment to miss the spacious hot baths back in Almyra. Yuri would probably love those. He had practically moved into Garreg Mach’s when Rhea finally let the former Wolves upstairs. 

Maybe someday, Claude thinks, when the war is won and his dreams are rising, he could bring a friend back home. Show off everything he’d grown up on. It’s not too much to ask for. 

His stomach growls. “Some food, too.”

Yuri wrinkles his nose. “The food at this inn is crap. Take a raincheck. Come by Abyss again, and I’ll make you a better meal.”

He hasn’t been back since. Well. That. “The millennium’s coming up,” Claude says. “The reunion…” The boy who’d gathered his team around and made them promise to meet again in five years’ time seems so far away now. 

“I remember,” Yuri says. “It might be a fitting memorial.”

“That it would.” Won’t be the same without Teach, but seeing the others is a nice prospect, assuming they show. Yuri and his crew are guaranteed to be there, at least, and that means more today than it would have before. 

“You don’t want to forget her,” Yuri says quietly. And there it is. That’s part of it too. 

How do you remember someone who died for you? How do you remember her as more than the dying? Isn’t he the one who first saw her as a pen to write his dreams with? Rhea’s avatar, Edelgard’s savior, Yuri’s ace, his treasure trove of secrets. Whatever the fuck she was to Dimitri. Did she ever get the chance to be anything but the tasks and titles they stacked on her? It seems so brutally unfair. So unfixable with her gone. 

“I wish I… I should have gotten to know her. Better. When I had the chance.” 

Yuri closes his eyes. Up close, Claude can see the smeared shimmer of lilac powder on his lids, spilling onto his cheeks. “I’ll drink to that,” he says. “Already have, always will.” 

“Next round’s on me,” Claude promises. “We’ll drink in her name. Hell, we’ll drink to her never having to drink the swill you serve at the Wilting Rose ever again.” 

“You bring something better, you drink something better.” 

“You’ve got yourself a deal.” Claude props one arm behind his head, cards his other hand through the matted roots of Yuri’s hair. The world feels like it’s moving again, the way it hasn’t for a very long time. Five years. Here’s hoping he’s made good use of them. 

Outside the wind picks up. Wisps of chill sneak through the cheap insulation. It will be winter soon, never Claude’s favorite time of year. But this year, winter brings change and chance. Saying goodbye to old friends and folding in the new. This year, Claude will ride the wind and meet the cold snap of it with relish.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [Letterblade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Letterblade) for beta, as always. <3 <3 <3
> 
> Title is from "The Parting Glass." Yes, another folk song. I swear, I listen to other genres. :-p Anyway, [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcSqI1KZiLI) is the version I listened to while writing.


End file.
